These Are The People Who Control Our Government

The folks at Public Policy Polling have gone out into the tangled conservative mind again, and they have brought back some more interesting specimens of the incredibly diverse species of bats currently inhabiting that peculiar belfry. Sometimes, I think that the PPP folks do this just to fk with people, but now, in the middle of an economic brawl that is escalating toward the catastrophic, the results of the poll take on an added importance. The vandals in our government have been elected by people who believe certain things. That is the reason that the vandals are doing what they do. When you hear our careful, courtier press talk about how the Republicans have to maintain the support of The Base, this is pretty much who they're talking about.

Overall, 36% of Americans and 62% of Republicans believe that the Obama Administration is secretly trying to take everyone's guns away; just 14% of Democrats believe the same. One in four Americans say that President Obama is secretly trying to figure out a way to stay in office beyond 2017 - including almost half of Republicans (44%). And 26% of Americans think that Muslims are covertly implementing Sharia Law in American court systems, while 55% don't think so and another 19% aren't sure. There's a huge partisan breakdown on this one as well - 42% of Republicans fear Sharia Law making its way into America's courts while just 12% of Democrats agree.

13% believe that the U.S. government engages in so-called "false flag" operations, where the government plans and executes terrorist or mass shooting events and blames those actions on others, 70% disagree. Republicans (21%) are more than twice as likely as Democrats (9%) to believe this theory. 19% say there is a secret society such as Skull and Bones that produces America's political and financial leaders to serve the wealthy elite. And 17% of voters said they think a group of world bankers are slowly eliminating paper currency to force most banking online - only to cut the power grid so regular citizens can't access money and are forced into worldwide slavery. Nearly one in three Republicans (27%) believe the electronic currency theory while just 10% of Democrats agree.

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This did not happen yesterday. This did not -- pace, Ed Kilgore-- happen in 2009. What we see today is the prion disease manifesting itself in garish symptoms, but, as we mentioned yesterday, the country ate the monkey brains in 1980, when it allowed -- nay, celebrated -- Ronald Reagan's spurious anecdotes as works of innate political genius. Lest we all forget, let's look back at the invaluable work that Mark Green and Gail MacColl did in compiling their encyclopedic archive of the rubbish that Reagan made a career of slinging.

Reagan: "Can we abandon this country [South Africa] that has stood beside us in every war we've ever fought?"

Reagan: "We are not trying to do anything to try and overthrow the Nicaraguan government."

Reagan: "You have to remember, we don't have the military industrial complex that we once had, when President Eisenhower spoke about it."

Reagan: "Those [nuclear weapons] that are carried in ships of one kind or another, or submersibles, you are dealing there with a conventional type of weapon or instrument, and those instruments can be intercepted. They can be recalled."

Reagan: "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."

Is it really that hard to understand why 62 percent of Republicans today would believe that this president is coming to confiscate all the firearms in the United States, or why 44 percent of them believe he is scheming to stay in power past January of 2017? Given that, is it really that hard to wonder how Ted Cruz becomes a person of influence in his party?

Those were the days in which the Republican party, having already abandoned its long-standing support for racial equality, also abandoned science and reason in favor of splinter Protestantism and whatever secular hogwash polled well, no matter whether it was true or not. That was when the press decided that anything should be treated as true if enough people demonstrated at the polls that they were willing to believe it. The reign of morons began with the triumph of bullshit.